The Apostle Paul taught that every follower of Jesus Christ is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). We are like “walking tabernacles” of God’s presence wherever we go, including the workplace. Just like the tabernacle, the portable temple where God’s presence resided that the Israelites carried through the wilderness for forty years until they entered the Promised Land, we too can experience the presence of God as we travel through the wilderness of our workplaces over our forty-year careers. He blesses our employers, coworkers, subordinates, and customers as he works with us, in us, and through us.

The Day of Pentecost has sometimes been overlooked in many churches I have attended, which is unfortunate. What happened with the early church in Jerusalem fifty days after the Passover clearly empowered them to do the work Jesus had called them to do, which radically changed the civilized world as we know it. The Holy Spirit’s power and presence continue to impact our workplaces today.
In my Christian walk, I have observed several key truths about the Holy Spirit I would like to explore. I’ll discuss the first two today and the third and fourth in my next article.

The power of the indwelling Spirit enables Christians to do great things for Christ’s Kingdom.
We experience God’s presence through the Holy Spirit as he teaches us and reminds us of Jesus’s words.
The gifts of the Holy Spirit help us to find our purpose.
The fruit of the Spirit makes us like Christ.

The Power of the Holy Spirit
The best place to start our discussion on the impact that the Day of Pentecost had on the work of Jesus’s disciples and with believers today is to unpack the power of the Holy Spirit. Before he ascended to heaven, Jesus told his disciples to stay in Jerusalem to “wait for the gift my Father promised” (Act. 1:4). Jesus said that they would “receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you” and that this gift would enable them to be his witnesses “to the ends of the earth” (Act. 1:8).
In Acts 2:1-41, the Holy Spirit did a mighty work among the ethnically diverse crowd gathered on the Day of Pentecost to expand the church to three thousand new believers. The Spirit worked in and through Peter as evidenced by his powerful preaching, where he moved in the hearts of the Gentiles who had heard the gospel of Jesus Christ in their own language and repented. The church continued to work in the power of the Holy Spirit as God’s coworkers to expand his church in Jerusalem on a global scale.
This power the apostles had enabled them to do the challenging work Jesus called them to do. This same power resides in us, giving us strength to obey God in order to live the Christian life. The Holy Spirit gives ordinary Christians the ability to work with a renewed mind and a higher purpose.
Tom Nelson, in Work Matters, heartily echoes this concept:
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When we read a psalm of praise such as Psalm 145, we are not being asked to carry the burden of praising God on our own; rather, we are invited to join the choir of Jesus as he leads us in praise. The initiative is with Jesus, the song is by Jesus, the tune is set by Jesus. All we do is join in. And that makes praise a joyful and glad calling.

For some years now I have been on a voyage of discovery in the book of Psalms. In particular, I have wanted to know how we, as new covenant believers today, ought to read and sing the psalms. I have known, of course, that the New Testament quotes some psalms about Christ. Perhaps most famously, Jesus quotes from Psalm 22 when he cries on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
And there are many other psalms either quoted by Jesus or quoted about Jesus. But what I have gradually discovered is that many, many other psalms speak for Christ or about Christ. And I have also been fascinated to find that this has been well-known by lots and lots of Christian writers in the first three-quarters or more of Christian history. It’s been quite a revelation to me. Again and again I have seen a psalm come into focus when I relate it to Christ, similar to a fuzzy scene through a camera viewfinder coming into sharp focus when the lens is properly adjusted.
My method for approaching this and also a survey of how the psalms have been read in Christian history is to approach the question from two directions, in a sort of pincer movement. First, moving forward from the psalms, I have traced several ways in which the psalms cry out for a future completion only possible in Christ. And then, second, I have tried to study carefully how Christ quotes from and echoes the psalms, and then how the apostolic writers do so, as the Holy Spirit led them into all truth.
I want to mention just four psalms as teasers to provoke you to think. I have called the article “Four Psalms You Didn’t Realize Point to Christ.” And, of course, you may answer, Ah, but I did. You didn’t think I did, but I did realize this! If you did, then well and good. Forgive me for misrepresenting you. But just in case you didn’t, here are four psalms. They are no more than teasers to whet your appetite to learn to read the psalms in a wholly Christian way. I hope they will prove a blessing to you.
Psalm 1
Let’s start with the very first psalm. Psalm 1 declares God’s blessing on a man who doesn’t act in some wrong ways (Ps. 1:1), but who delights in God’s instruction and thinks about it day and night (Ps. 1:2). He is a remarkable man, likened to a tree whose roots go deep into fresh water so that his life yields good fruit and prospers in every way. It’s a beautiful psalm and a short one. There are two ways to respond. First, we may say to ourselves, If God’s blessing rests on this kind of person, then I want to be like that. I will look at what this man does not do, and I will resolve not to do these things. I will ponder what he does do, and I will decide to be like that. Then, I hope I will be blessed. That’s not a bad way to respond. But it will always lead to disappointment. However hard I try, I will never live up to this portrait. And so Christian writers (including Augustine around 400 AD and Luther soon after in 1500 AD) have said, There is only one man who fits this description.
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Written by Blaise Edwards, M.D. |
Thursday, December 16, 2021
Those physicians who are authoritatively forcing the shot on all patients have blood on their hands.  They should know better, especially regarding pregnant women and children.  Never in my lifetime have we abdicated testing, crossed our fingers, and said, “Well, so far, so good.  Let’s give it a shot on pregnant women.”  There was always a significantly higher burden of safety here. 

When I was in medical school, I had the privilege of working in a large inner-city hospital, located right between two rival gangs.  There were no emergency room residents, so trauma was handled by the general surgery residents.   As such, I had firsthand views of some significant trauma.  Each “emergency room” was basically curtains separating a large open space into cubicles.  One day, a report came over the radio, we would receive a wounded officer and a wounded gang member.  The officer was unfortunately shot in the back and paralyzed, the gang member shot in the knee, but otherwise fine.  They were placed side by side, but with the curtain open, giving more room for triage.  I’ll never forget that the officer, with a neck brace on, couldn’t move, but his eyes were constantly looming rightward, toward the gang member.  The gang member could turn his head, and he was giving the officer his best death stare, no remorse.
Someone whispered what I was thinking, basically the desire to withhold treatment and kick the gang member out of the hospital, or actually harm him.  But what we did, and what the trauma team did, was to treat him like every other patient.  In essence, we did our jobs.
So now, in current times, we have doctors refusing to see “unvaccinated” people.  Really? That is the hill these physicians want to die on? We have an experimental gene therapy that did not go through full proper testing, underwent data manipulation so they could get their precious EUA, and doesn’t do anything it is supposed to.  On top of that, it is seemingly harming, both directly through injury and indirectly through immune weakness, lots of innocent people.  And these supposedly “trained” doctors, because they are too scared to stand up to the administration and their peers, are not only allowing this disaster to be carried out but actually arguing with patients about the purported benefit of the therapy.
It doesn’t take long to find out that safety has been shelved and replaced by profit motives.  Why is there no data safety review board? Why are the drug companies and the government (in other words, the industry) the ones reviewing their own investigations? The safety review board should be independent and beyond reproach.  This is not happening.
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